Dark Horse Comics, the third-largest comic book publisher in the United States behind Marvel and DC, has canceled the publication of a book by a Holocaust scholar after he refused to include an introduction accusing Israel of “genocide,” according to the Jewish advocacy organization StandWithUs, which condemned the move in a statement on Sunday.

Dark Horse had scheduled Dr. Rafael Medoff’s Cartoonists Against the Holocaust — a collection of 150 editorial cartoons from American newspapers of the 1930s and 1940s, accompanied by Medoff’s commentary on what Americans knew about the Holocaust as it unfolded — for publication this summer. According to StandWithUs, then-Dark Horse imprint editor Craig Yoe told Medoff, the founding director of the Washington, DC-based David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, that he would block publication unless the book’s introduction stated that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Yoe later followed up in writing, the group said, demanding that the book include text accusing Israel of “war crimes and crimes against humanity” and claiming that the US operates “concentration camp-style prisons.”

Medoff refused, arguing that the claims are false, and Dark Horse subsequently canceled the project.

“Accusing Israel of genocide is a lie, and requiring a Holocaust scholar to denounce Israel to see his book published is antisemitic bullying,” Medoff said in the statement. “It’s troubling to see McCarthyism rearing its ugly head in 21st century America. Historians should be free to write about history, without being subjected to political litmus tests.”

Dark Horse had previously published two of Medoff’s books, Whistleblowers and Cartoonists Against Racism, without incident. It was only after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of Israel, StandWithUs said, that Yoe began demanding that Medoff denounce Israel as a condition of publication.

Dark Horse has disputed that account. In a June 3 email to StandWithUs cited by the Israeli news outlet Ynet, the publisher’s legal counsel said the decision was based on the company’s financial needs and repeated scheduling delays, and that Dark Horse “does not plan to publish” the book.

StandWithUs noted on Sunday that a number of institutions have demanded that Jewish public figures, writers, and artists denounce the Jewish state as a condition of being platformed. Earlier this year, former Northwestern University president Morton Schapiro was forced to withdraw as a commencement speaker at Georgetown Law School, and, as previously reported by The Algemeiner, the historic Playhouse Cinema in Hamilton, Ontario, canceled the Hamilton Jewish Film Festival in 2024 after anti-Zionist activists flooded its inboxes with messages demanding the cancellation, some of which contained threats.

In another recent example, Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid was forced to withdraw from the FID Marseille film festival, held on July 7-12, where he had been invited to serve on the jury, after roughly a dozen filmmakers threatened to pull their films from the event in protest of his participation.

“When a comic book publisher pressures a Holocaust scholar to denounce the Jewish state before his own book on the Holocaust can see print, the irony is hard to miss,” Carly Gammill, director of legal policy and litigation at StandWithUs Saidoff Law, said in Sunday’s statement. “We are seeing an alarming trend in which Jewish professionals are expected to pass ideological tests before they can fully participate in public life.”

She continued, “Whether in academia, the arts, or publishing, Jewish authors should be evaluated on the quality of their work — not on whether they are willing to denounce a core part of their Jewish identity.”

Publishing is not the only sector in which Zionist Jews report being pressured to denounce Israel and facing retaliation when they refuse.

Earlier this month, The Algemeiner reported on the ongoing plight of Hofstra University professor Richard Himelfarb, a Jewish Zionist who is facing a disciplinary process that could end his career. The proceedings began after Himelfarb, during a faculty meeting in Nov. 2025, described a colleague’s proposals for two new Jewish studies courses — which dozens of other faculty members also declined to support — as “word salad.” The colleague, an anti-Zionist professor who is also Jewish, filed a harassment complaint accusing Himelfarb of discrimination.

“Himelfarb’s remark that Slabodsky’s proposals were ‘word salad’ is clearly speech related to teaching and thus protected,” the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) said in a June 5 letter to the university, arguing that discussing proposed courses at a faculty meeting is squarely part of a professor’s teaching duties and that disagreements among faculty are protected by the principles of academic freedom and free speech.

Columbia University professor Shai Davidai endured a similar alleged persecution in 2024. After gaining viral recognition on social media for denouncing the university’s refusal to punish riotous anti-Zionist protesters, Columbia opened an investigation into his conduct toward students and staff, including a senior administrator whom he chastised for declining to cancel a protest held to celebrate Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.

Antisemitism in academic medical centers located on college campuses is also fostering noxious environments that deprive Jewish healthcare professionals of their civil right to work in spaces free from discrimination and hate, according to a study published in May 2025 by the StandWithUs Data & Analytics Department. Titled “Antisemitism in American Healthcare: The Role of Workplace Environment,” the study included survey data showing that 62.8 percent of Jewish healthcare professionals employed by campus-based medical centers reported experiencing antisemitism — a far higher rate than those working in private practice and community hospitals. Fueling the rise in hate, it added, were repeated failures of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives to educate workers about antisemitism.